Now is the time to make certain our elected officials are as painfully aware of the plight in the borderlands as the citizens living on both sides of the border are. There is no more time for excuses or diversions. Our representatives need to understand that security is a separate issue from immigration. We cannot wait for the federal government to conclude immigration debates before we address the violence suffered by borderland residents.

This week the Texas Legislature’s Senate Committee on Transportation and Homeland Security held its first post-election hearings on border violence as it prepares for the new session opens in January. Chairman Tommy Williams (R-The Woodlands) presided over the meeting in which state agencies, local law enforcement agencies, border prosecutors and urban prosecutors described the current state of affairs. Here are a few points that deserve to be highlighted:

• From the perspective of the border communities, the lack of control of the border has not been a priority.

• While recent initiatives, such as Line Backer, Border Star and Stone Garden, have had successes, that does not imply everything is now all right. The border remains wide open, and additional resources and manpower are needed at all levels.

• The spillover has happened and is happening. Drug trafficking organizations have severely disrupted border life on both sides of the border.

• The Laredo area has suffered 150 kidnappings this year. Three cartel hit teams have been taken out, and thus far only three people on the hit list of 15 have been killed.

• As cartels and their associated gangs increasingly employ juveniles, new measures are required to handle the juvenile issue. Border Patrol increasingly refers juveniles to state facilities, but the backlog for prosecutors often results in the juveniles being released.

What needs to be done? First, we need to view the brutal organizations perpetrating the violence more similarly to those the nation has faced in Iraq than as simple crime organizations of decades past. Indeed, the recent car bombs, grenade attacks, intimidations and beheadings bear a much closer resemblance to what has been faced in Iraq and South Asia than along the Texas-Mexico border.

Second, we need to communicate with our elected representatives – in Washington and Austin – that security along the border is of paramount importance. The silence to date from the borderland representatives on the violence issue has been deafening. Perhaps this is why Rep. Solomon P. Ortiz, Rep. Ciro Rodriguez, and many Democratic state representatives from South Texas met with defeat in the mid-term elections. Rep. Ortiz and Rep. Rodriguez represented the majority of the Texas-Mexico borderlands.

We all need to propose our best ideas. Feel free to submit ideas to this blog if you are uncertain about submitting them to your representative, and the ideas will be forwarded.

Here are a few specific suggestions that were proposed this week:

• Increase manpower and resources on the border. While this is obvious, the federal government has dedicated insufficient resources.

• Increase anonymous tip alternatives such as the iWatch program DHS offers free of charge. iWatch empowers citizens by allowing them to anonymously text and send photos to a central location that can analyze the data. This location should preferably be at an unknown location removed at great distance from the border, such that the persons manning the facility are unknown and free from coercion.

• Increase southbound enforcement in search of weapons and cash. To date the searches have been very effective, but they have been inconsistent.

Joan Neuhaus Schaan is the fellow in homeland security and terrorism at the Baker Institute, coordinator of the Texas Security Forum, and serves on the advisory board of the Transborder International Police Association. She has served as the executive director of the Houston-Harris County Regional Homeland Security Advisory Council and on the board of Crime Stoppers of Houston, Inc.